BootMod3 Flash
Here's where things begin to take a turn. I purchased the BM3 license and reached out to a tuner. We flashed on a base map, did a few data logs and squeezed in a revision right before I packed the car up for a second trip to Buttonwillow. All was good, no issues however that changed shortly once arriving to the track.
Second Buttonwillow Track Day
We set out for the second track day with the M4. About an hour into the drive I caught a nail in the driver front tire resulting in a flat in the middle of the grapevine on the 5 fwy. For those who aren't familiar with with socal, the grapevine is a section of the highway that passes through about 45 miles of mountains connecting two cities with very few exits in between. I called AAA for a flatbed and patiently waited. About 45 minutes pass and I see a flat bed.. Thank god.. Only to SEE HIM DRIVE RIGHT PAST THE CAR. Awesome. There's really no way for the truck to turn around so let's call AAA again. Another 30-40 minutes pass and I decide to follow up, they give me several 10-20 minute intervals with updates that seem to be pushing later and later only to find out the tow truck en route has broken down.. Beautiful. Call AAA a third time, they dispatch another tow truck out. About an hour later on the side of the road, I see a flatbed. Thank god.. I flag him down and thankfully he pulls over. He immediately tells me that he is not the assigned truck to this car and was actually headed up north (the direction of the race track) to pick up another car. After a few minutes of reasoning with the gentleman, he decides to pick the car up and we call AAA to assign his truck to the M4. The next hurdle was getting the car on the truck undamaged. With a little bit of freeway-side engineering, we were able to get the car loaded with the bumper and splitter unscathed. The driver was kind enough to tow the car all the way to the racetrack where I found two 275/35R18 Toyo RR's to replace the front tires and we would be able to get the car on track around 1:30pm.
The car arrived safely to the track and I immediately began the tire swap process. Thankfully the track's tire shop had the tires readily available in stock which was a day saver. However the first session out with the flash, the car immediately goes into drivetrain malfunction. All boost is cut, and the car is limited to 4000rpm, just enough to limp it off the track. Fearing the tune was too aggressive, I swapped the map back to stock and the car was able to drive and produce boost. The car ran, however a noticeable amount of power was being pulled and the car was running about 10mph slower down the front straight. Fastest lap time I could muster was a 1:54, almost 2 seconds slower than the initial baseline day. I decided to save the car, drive it home, and bring it back another day. Big big thank you to Mike from Counterspace Garage for coming out and helping out! Arrived to the track on a tow truck, and drove the car home. Ironic right?
